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PARIS: At the first major news conference of his presidency, Emmanuel Macron pledged tax cuts but said the French would also have to work more as he outlined his response to months of anti-government protests that have challenged his authority. Two years into his term in office, Macron is under pressure to quell nearly six months of "yellow vest" demonstrations that have brought weekly havoc to cities nationwide. A first salvo of measures offered last December and worth 10 billion euros ($11.13 billion) failed to calm anger among low-income workers. Forty-one year-old Macron, who has struggled to shake off the moniker "president of the rich" that links to his past as an investment banker, said he wanted a "significant" cut in income tax, which he said would be financed by closing loopholes some companies benefit from. He said government spending would also be squeezed and the French would have to work longer hours. The tax cuts, which come at a time when France is battling to keep its budget deficit in check and stick to European Union rules, would be worth around 5 billion euros, he said. "We must work more, I've said it before. France works much less than its neighbours. We need to have a real debate on this," Macron told an audience of journalists gathered in a gilded hall at the Elysee Palace, speaking from behind a desk. With the 'yellow vest' protesters frequently decrying the political establishment's elitism, Macron said he also wanted to get the French more involved in the democratic process by making it easier to hold referendums on some issues. A new push to decentralise government, breaking away from the historic 'centrist' method where all is decided in Paris, would also be made within a year, and no more schools or hospitals would be closed without backing from the local mayor. Although the number of demonstrators has declined since a peak in November, protesters clashed with police for a 23rd straight week last Saturday, with the sustained unrest having an draining effect on business, tourism and the economy. Thursday's response is the result of a three-month long national debate, during which Macron rolled up his sleeves to discuss issues from high taxes to local democracy with groups of citizens at 'town hall' meetings around the country. Dubbed the "great debate", it also involved one meeting where he stayed up debating issues of state with philosophers until after midnight. Despite the criticism levelled at him, and opinion poll ratings that have fallen to around 30 percent, Macron stuck to his guns on his policy platform on Thursday, saying his government had already implemented many reforms and would go on. "I asked myself: Should we stop everything that was done over the past two years? Did we take a wrong turn? I believe quite the opposite," he said. The 'yellow vest' street rebellion erupted over planned diesel tax hikes last November, but quickly morphed into a broader backlash against inequality and a political elite perceived as having lost touch with ordinary voters. Macron, who swept to power promising to "transform France" and "make work pay", has seen his ambitious reform agenda derailed -- or at least knocked off target -- by the unrest. Pension and unemployment insurance reforms planned for 2019 have made little progress so far. COMMENT Macron said that the pension reform would be presented to cabinet this summer and that future increases in the lowest pensions would be indexed to inflation, another effort to provide lower-income workers with some succour.

If you bit the bullet and preordered a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti or GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, EVGA has a new overclocking tool that might interest you. It's the latest iteration of the company's Precision software, and as of right now, it exclusively supports RTX cards. Support for GTX cards is "coming soon," EVGA says. For now, it only works with RTX cards. If you're upgrading from an older version, be prepared for things to look different—EVGA implemented a brand new GUI that is supposed to be both faster and easier to use. Other key features include: Real-Time wattage monitoring (on supported EVGA graphics cards). RGB LED Control supporting graphics cards and/or NVLink Bridge. LED Sync that syncs with other EVGA RGB components. Dynamically set independent voltage/frequency points for ultimate control. New OC Scanner for finding the best stable overclock. On-Screen-Display (OSD) shows your system vitals at a glance. GPU Clock, Memory Clock and Voltage Control. Custom fan control and fan curve. Profiling system allowing up to 10 profiles with hotkey. In game screenshot function. EVGA also posted a video that goes over some of the new and improved features. One of the more interesting parts starts at the 2m28sec market, which goes over the utility's VF (voltage/frequency) curve tuner. Apparently it takes about 20 minutes to run. What it does is attempt to find the highest stable frequency a card is capable of running. You can also manually input clockspeeds and then test for stability, though if the VF tuner works as advertised, it would take the guesswork out of overclocking.

Civilization 6: Gathering Storm turns climate change into an end boss. After thousands of years of progress and expansion, the surviving civilisations have another hurdle to jump over, one that's ostensibly greater and more complex than any they've encountered before. It throws plans into disarray, transforms the map and can't be overcome by armies or culture. It's the most exciting Civilization has been in ages. For most of history, civs have barely any impact on the climate. It's not until resources like coal and oil start being exploited that CO2 emissions start to increase and transform the map, mostly through rising sea levels. Foul weather, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, however, can interfere with your empire-building plans whenever, so nature is a persistent adversary. The very first choice you make after picking a civ—there are eight new ones, and nine new leaders—is finding a hex to settle on, typically on your first turn. Straight away, Gathering Storm flings a few more decisions into the mix. If you're playing as the Maori, for instance, you start at sea and get bonuses for every turn you choose to forgo putting down roots, while the Phoenicians get more flexibility later on, thanks to their ability to move their capital to any other city with their unique building. There are some unusual twists among the expanded roster that make them stand out even as the list grows massive. No matter the civ you're playing, you'll still need to spend a bit more time considering where to establish your first city. Plonking your capital right on a flood plain puts all of the improvements and districts at risk of destruction, while making your home near a volcano is just asking for trouble. There are rewards for taking those risks, though, notably the increased fertility of the nearby hexes. Despite being random events, you can still plan; you can still build the potential risks and rewards into your strategy. While climate change is complicated, Gathering Storm keeps it easy to parse, focusing on a few specific sources. Strategic resources like coal can be burned for fuel to enhance certain modern and later buildings, while some units require a constant supply or you won't be able to use them. They're important resources, then, but they're also the reason CO2 levels rise. So you have some pretty big, but thankfully clear, choices to make. Swearing off oil might cost you some units and force you to spend time switching your cities to a new power source, but it will also slow down the changes. It's a very different kind of threat from an aggressive neighbour. Disaster can strike anywhere on the map, though some places are at greater risk than others. From the modern age onward, buildings and projects appear that can mitigate things like flooding or rising sea levels, but that's time and resources you might not be able to afford. But that's when your aggressive neighbour might save you. Gathering Storm doesn't treat natural disasters or climate change as the concerns of individual civs. Through the World Congress, motions can be put to the other civs, creating an emergency event where everyone is called on to send aid to the victim of the disaster. Like other emergencies, they're framed as competitions, which each civ attempting to excel, whether it's at being very charitable or stopping Katherine of Sweden from converting another city to Taoism. Using the World Congress becomes even more important as the danger increases. It's all well and good to look at the melting polar ice caps and say "OK, I'm going to buy a Tesla and go vegan", but it takes an international, political effort to make a tangible difference. I shut down my oil platforms and coal mines, I decommissioned my ships and planes, but even then the seas continued to rise. It took international legislation banning certain power plants and some friendly competition between civs to make a dent. Always it's a competition, which suits Civilization nicely. The impending ecological disaster is a good showcase of the new diplomacy system, but you'll end up becoming very familiar with it long before the glaciers start vanishing. Diplomatic favour funds each civ's international clout. It's a resource that can be traded for both the tangible, like gold or artefacts, and the fleeting, like promises. Competing in international events, helping out during emergencies and making allies will earn you some, too. When the World Congress meets, that favour translates into votes, letting you try to push your agenda at the global level. I've become a very two-faced leader, I confess. In person it's all smiles and assurances, but the moment the World Congress convenes, I'm there with a knife behind my back. "Yeah, Trajan, we're good buddies," I say as I spend all of my favour to neuter his army. Instead of a diplomatic victory hinging on you making everyone like you, it depends on you making deals, competing in international events and wisely spending favour. Sure, alliances and becoming the suzerain of a city-state will net you favour, but there are several routes to winning the political game, and being a sneaky wheeler and dealer is one of them. This is certainly the most engaging diplomacy has been in Civilization 6, and perhaps in the series. Other Civilizations have modelled global diplomacy and politics, but not at this scale and definitely not so woven into the fabric of the game. Rise and Fall got the ball rolling, but it's Gathering Storm that turns diplomacy into a clear strategy and makes it instrumental in fixing new problems that involve everyone. Even though it's still competitive, there are unifying moments where every civ makes some sacrifices to right the ship. The setup for the end game—if it all goes wrong, anyway—is pretty dramatic. The coast has been swallowed up by the ocean, natural disasters are increasing in occurrence and whole industries, previously reliant on fossil fuels, are shutting down. Every inch of the world, or what remains, is already in use, so expansion can only come in the form of conquest. It's all very World War 3. And then… it stops. Climate change just sort of ends. During the final phase, 85 percent of the ice caps melt and disasters start jumping up by a couple of percent, but then there's just no more climate change. In my large continents map, just over 70 hexes were swallowed by the sea, which did submerge an island and make some of the coast unusable, but it was surmountable, especially once I unlocked technology that allowed me to build habitats in the ocean. The habitats, called seasteads, are one of the new techs that appear during the future era. They're handy, and there's something about building homes in the water that calls to mind Alpha Centauri, which is never a bad thing, but otherwise the new era is a bit of a dud. The scope is very narrow, in what is otherwise an ambitious expansion. Most of the techs just seem to improve the flashy sci-fi unit you can now construct: a giant killer robot. It's tough, silly, and I won't deny that smashing up enemy cities with giant death machines is fun, but with a few of them built, the future era quickly runs out of new things. It's brief and largely extraneous. With no more changes on the horizon and the sea levels settling, all those self-imposed limits can be lifted, returning the endgame to something a bit more traditional. I kept waiting for the final crescendo, some awful apocalypse, but it never came. I was acting under the illusion that we were trying to stave off the end of all human civilisation, but this seems less urgent. It's still best to avoid it, but knowing that it fizzles out robs it of some of its power. It's the journey to that end scenario, whether you stop climate change or not, where Gathering Storm has the most impact. The new emergencies, cooperation and the effect of climate change even on war can dramatically change the game, even if you know that the end of the world never arrives. The choice of map also makes a difference. Playing on an archipelago or on islands, for instance, ensures that a huge amount of damage will be done before the climate meter stops moving. And, as always, you can exert some control over the random maps, tweaking properties like initial sea levels and resource abundance. If challenge is what you want, you can still find it. Civilization 6: Gathering Storm bites off a lot, but it proves more than capable of juggling big concepts like climate change and global diplomacy. It turns them into coherent but still complex systems that you'll constantly be interacting with, even before you start noticing that the beaches are vanishing. The climax doesn't live up to the build-up, but Civilization 6 is still a richer game for all the expansion brings. NEED TO KNOW What is it? A 4X expansion full of natural disasters and and politicking. Expect to pay £35/$40 Developer Firaxis Games Publisher 2K Reviewed on GTX 1080Ti, Intel i7-8086K, 16GB RAM Multiplayer Yes Link Official site Buy it Steam, Humble Store

Welcome back to Kamurocho, the city district where nearly every problem can be solved by kicking, punching or just lifting a guy up into the air and slamming him arse first onto a bollard. A conman tries to scam you out of money? You can punch your way through that. A retired judo pro requests a tour of local nightlife? Yet more punching. An eccentric gangster engineers a series of increasingly elaborate attacks in an attempt to provoke you into fighting him? You get the idea. Your oath brother murders the head of your crime family? That's a slightly trickier problem to solve. Instead, series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu decides to take the fall, resulting in a ten year prison sentence and his expulsion from the Tojo Clan. Kiryu returns to Kamurocho in 2005, only to learn that Nishikiyama—the man he willingly gave up a decade of his freedom for—has betrayed the clan, triggering a desperate battle for leadership. This, too, is a problem that can be solved by punching. A lot of punching, spread over many hours. NEED TO KNOW What is it? A remake of 2005's Yakuza, in the engine of Yakuza 0. Expect to pay £15/$20 Developer SEGA Publisher In-house Reviewed on GeForce GTX 1070, 16GB RAM, i5-6600k Multiplayer Online minigames Yakuza Kiwami is, in other words, another Yakuza game, and will be instantly familiar to anyone who's played Yakuza 0. There's the slowly unfolding melodramatic crime drama, the slice-of-life sidequests, and the selection of minigames and activities, from bowling to karaoke to a questionable card battler about scantily clad women roleplaying as insects. It's both serious and silly, sometimes within the same cutscene, but it works because Kiryu is such an inherently likeable lead—calm, authoritative, naive and endearing. If you haven't played Yakuza 0, go and do that first. Yakuza Kiwami is a remake of the first game in the series into Yakuza 0's engine—its story ever-so-slightly tweaked and expanded to better integrate with the plot points of the '80s prequel. You don't need to have played 0 to understand what's happening in Kiwami, but it's the bigger, better and more well rounded experience. As a remake of a 13-year-old game—even one with extra features—Kiwami takes place entirely in Kamurocho, and offers fewer side activities and less playful substories. It's a relic from a time before the series fully knew what it was, dressed up in the clothes of Yakuza at its best. Perhaps it's better to think of Yakuza Kiwami as an expansion pack to Yakuza 0. It's by no means a bad game, but expectations need to be managed. Take the reappearance of Kamurocho. Every Yakuza game features the district, but most offer new perspectives, or balance it alongside other locations. Not so in Kiwami. Yet it's still a joy to discover how the setting has changed in the 20 years since the events of Yakuza 0—realising the significance of Millennium Tower in relation to 0's main plot, or discovering what lurks beneath West Park's homeless camp. 0's colourful filter is gone, and the streets feel greyer and less vibrant. The '80s bubble economy is long over, and money is harder to come by—no longer flying from the bodies of beaten up thugs or earned in the millions thanks to the chicken you assigned to manage your real estate holdings. One of the things I love about the Yakuza series is that its semi-satirical edge isn't aimed at the vague concept of urban Japan, but at specific points in time. By using 0's engine, Kiwami highlights the difference between the mid-'80s and mid-'00s in the starkest possible way. This is a mostly faithful remake. Many of the cutscenes are shot-for-shot recreations of those found in the PlayStation 2 original. But Kiwami also adds new elements, both for better and worse. A clear improvement is the cutscenes added between each chapter, that show what happened to Nishikiyama during the ten years Kiryu was away. They help to add further depth to the character, and build nicely on his role in Yakuza 0. Less positive is what the remake does with Majima. He's the star of a new system called Majima Everywhere, and it's a bit of a mess—a clunky way to shoehorn Yakuza 0's second protagonist into a game he barely appeared in. When Kiryu returns from prison, Majima challenges him to a series of fights—ostensibly as a way to help him resharpen his edge after ten years away. Throughout the game he'll appear, either chasing you down on the streets or ambushing you out of bins and manholes and giant traffic cones. Some of the scenarios are entertaining, but the frequency and progression of the system means it quickly becomes tedious. Yakuza Kiwami's combat system is just as explosive and entertaining as 0's (because it's exactly the same), but the lengthy, protracted battles against Majima at his highest ranks are more about repeated execution of a handful of safe counters. After a certain point, he's just not much fun to fight. PERFORMANCE AND SETTINGS Expectedly, Yakuza Kiwami runs smoothly—easily maintaining 165fps at 1440p resolution on my GTX 1070. There are a handful of graphics quality settings—SSAA, FXAA, texture filtering, and shadow and geometry quality. Even with everything on maximum, though, this is not a game that cares about perfectly rendered high-resolution textures. There's plenty you can tweak, from UI scaling to remappable gamepad and keyboard inputs. As with Yakuza 0, though, a controller is the preferred way to play. The game warns you to use a gamepad when it boots up, and it's just the more comfortable control scheme. Attempting to mani[CENSORED]te the camera with the mouse is an exercise in frustration. Perhaps the biggest quality-of-life improvement is that Yakuza Kiwami autosaves your progress, and even lets you manually save from the menu without having to visit a phonebox. Purists may argue that having to travel to a savepoint was more philosophically in keeping with the way the series attempts to ground Kamurocho as a physical space, but I don't mind sacrificing that if it means not accidentally losing hours of progress. Worse still, the system feels incredibly jarring whenever you encounter the version of Majima that appears in the story proper. The character has softened a lot across the series, and so the version of him newly written into Majima Everywhere feels like a completely different person to that found in the 13-year-old main plot. One second he's impersonating a club hostess as a way to goad Kiryu into a fight, the next he's brutally beating his own men for not following instructions he never explicitly gave them. There's always some dissonance to be found in open world games, but this is a failure of characterisation in a series that revolves around the bonds between its characters. That's difficult to reconcile. Despite everything, I still recommend Yakuza Kiwami. If nothing else, it's worth it for the story, which introduces characters and events that go on to shape the series as a whole. More than the internal disputes of the Tojo Clan or the peculiar friendship of Kiryu and Majima, the heart of the series' story revolves around Kiryu's relationship with Haruka. That makes Yakuza Kiwami, and the pair's initial meeting, an important part of the series as a whole. Kiwami is probably my least favourite Yakuza game, but it's still an evocative, detailed and largely entertaining gangster thriller full of charm and absurdity.

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It’s very hard not to focus entirely on Cesar, Wargroove’s best boy and commander of his own army of warpups. Yes, dogs in shiny armour are a playable unit in this game. There is no violence against the four-legged soldiers, either—instead of dying, they just run away. If you’re not sold already, one of the other 12 commanders might do the trick. Don’t be fooled by the light-hearted tone, however—Wargroove is filled with creative, demanding challenges. An easy comparison to reach for is Into The Breach. Both feature direct, turn-based confrontation between two factions who often use the landscape to their advantage. But Wargroove is more in every way; more factions, more units, more map, more more. This could sound overwhelming but getting started is actually really easy. In the first few missions, as well as the arcade mode, your goal is generally to either defeat the opposing army’s commander or take their fortress. Capturing unallied buildings on the map or taking them from your opponent earns you money, which you can spend on new units or health. The campaign introduces the units one after another and gives you hints as to their use. The first time you’re up against airborne fiends, for example, you also gain ballistas and mages, both excellent against that particular type of enemy. These missions give you time to get to know units and their strengths and weaknesses without being overbearing. Knowing what type of soldier fares best against what enemy is crucial—a soldier with the distinct advantage can often win a battle in one strike. If they don’t, your opponent gets to counter. Commanders are the most important characters, not only because they’re the strongest and look the coolest, but because each of them has a unique special ability, the so-called groove, which is charged by defeating enemies. Some grooves have defensive capabilities like extra health or defence, some are just good old fashioned special attacks. While all armies share the same standard units, from small foot soldiers to massive golems and units for sea combat, they all have distinctly different looks that fit each commander and their lands. The people of the Japan-inspired Heavensong Empire build pagodas instead of stone castles, the golem of the Floran plant race looks like a giant tree. In terms of character design and animation, Wargroove is truly a standout. Command & Conquer The 30-plus missions of the single-player campaign follow a cute (if not particularly inventive) fantasy story. As well as standard conquering and destruction tasks, you’ll be rescuing prisoners from a fortress or helping refugees flee the site of a battle using wagons. If you prefer a quick challenge, there’s an arcade mode for each commander, and a puzzle mode in which you have to finish a mission within one round. Wargroove’s weaknesses are its at times crushing difficulty and tendency to drag on. Positioning characters in the right spots for attacks and critical hits is already difficult enough. But Wargroove’s maps are huge, meaning you can spend round after round simply traveling to meet the enemy. It’s not always clear how damage is calculated, and I had to adjust it in the options to have a chance at more than one mission. Maps often have chokepoints such as bridges that can be difficult to circumvent, quickly leading to your soldiers literally queuing to get slaughtered. Flanking enemies is really important—but generating an army large enough to do so takes time. A unit’s health also acts as its strength, leading to the problem common to games such as The Banner Saga where some characters simply act as cannon fodder, waiting on your replacement unit to make the trek from your barracks over to the actual fight. I’ve restarted some missions because it’s easier to start over than to move your half-dead unit away, heal them and then have them travel somewhere else. The multiplayer for up to 4 people comes with its own maps and is organised by passing in-game match codes around. In 2-player mode, I found small maps, evenly split in the middle by bridges. Both players pick a commander and start out on equal footing, with the same amount of buildings to conquer on each side, including multiple barracks. In this mode it’s vital to take buildings and retain them, as you’re going for direct confrontation with no way to skirt each other. Once you hold enough buildings, meaning money, and hold even just one barracks more than the other player, the game is all but decided. Victory is again achieved killing the commander or taking the fort, so real players are more likely than the CPU to aggressively bolster their forces to keep buildings surrounded. Whereas the campaign manages to switch things up, here the simple gameplay works to Wargroove’s detriment—I could have done with more variety to elevate this mode above its arcade counterpart. Wargroove does invite you to try your own hand at level design as it comes with a brilliant set of highly intuitive tools you can use to create your own maps and even cutscenes. Chucklefish certainly wants you in for the long haul, but as I started skipping lengthy battle animations and came to dread any standard battle, I wondered whether less isn’t sometimes more. NEED TO KNOW What is it? Turn-based tactical strategy in which you play 12 adorable fantasy factions including an armoured Golden Retriever. Expect to pay: $20/£16 Developer: Chucklefish Publisher: Chucklefish Reviewed on: Core i5-8400, GTX 1060, 16GB RAM Multiplayer: 2 to 4 players local and online

NEED TO KNOW What is it? A relaxing first person open world art creation game Expect to pay $25/£19.50 Developer Eastshade Studios Publisher In-house Reviewed on Windows 10, 16GB RAM, Intel Core i7-5820k, GeForce GTX 970 Multiplayer None Do you know who I admire? Anika from Eastshade. Anika lives in a little hut between the port of Lyndow and the city of Nava in the game. She’s obsessed with owls. Can’t get enough of them. When she’s not sitting bolt upright in her hovel she’s tramping through the ferns making hooting noises. I, on the other hand, am playing a travelling artist. I came to Eastshade to paint pictures in tribute to my mother via a type of in-game screenshotting. It’s this art focus which sets Eastshade apart from other games which muddle about in those Euro-flavoured high fantasy settings. The game opens with your character being shipwrecked. You wake up in a cave just outside the tiny port of Lyndow and start to explore, quickly accumulating a to-do list, idly picking up sticks and flowers, and noting how picturesque everything is. You learn how to make canvases out of bits of wood and fabric under the guise of teaching a little kid in Lyndow how to do it. Painting involves picking a canvas—either a fresh one or a used one you’re happy to paint over. Once you’ve picked your surface you compose the image. This is done by cropping the view you have onscreen using a rectangle guideline. Pressing E paints whatever’s in the rectangle, applying some effects so that what’s shown on an easel which appears in the world isn’t a straightforward screenshot, but takes on a painterly quality. Each painting costs inspiration, which you collect by visiting new areas or completing new tasks. Games being pretty isn’t unusual, but Eastshade’s design is closer to that of a grand garden. The buildings feel more like follies than functional houses, the bridges come straight from arcadian paintings, and curated lines of sight are key. Capturing specific objects, people or areas of Eastshade allows you to fulfil commissions or make progress in quests. The main purpose of the game is to collect four paintings which correspond to your mother’s memories of the place, but in trying to reach those locations you end up following little side stories—a religious conflict involving hallucinogenic tea, a neighbourly dispute over whether a guy who keeps getting jars stuck on his head is a good parent, a tiny detective quest involving a stolen book. There’s an element of crafting here too, although it’s not particularly complex. You can use what you gather to brew teas which offer different effects, trade feathers for cash, or build a raft or a reed boat to cross the water. I found that as long as I remembered to pack my boat up when I’d finished using it, I only needed to craft one. The only times I was really paying attention to my resources were when I needed to make money. Figuring out how to catch the largest kind of fish meant I could soon afford a coat and thus stay outside during the freezing night. Traipsing round, picking up feathers helped me pay the bridge toll and leave Lyndow. Eastshade isn’t huge—I finished in about 10 hours—but it is charming. There are memorable characters: Anika and her owl obsession, the ship’s captain who hates you because you don’t understand how much she loved her boat, the night drummers. And the screenshot mechanic is enough of a point of difference that the fairly familiar story setup still feels fresh. You also see your own paintings on people’s walls as you turn in commissions. The game crashed a lot so I’d advise saving frequently. Some of the tasks don’t flow smoothly (e.g. I spent a long time trying to make sealant for a raft, only to find out you get it from a character in Nava as part of a quest). I could also do with a few more map markers, and sometimes the painting interface didn’t register my clicks. But even with these quibbles using image capture as part of the game is fascinating. Tying it to a finite resource and making you compose a shot before you paint means you make decisions about what to capture in a different way to normal screenshotting. As someone who also loved the film camera in Firewatch, I’d love to see more developers play in this space.

WASHINGTON: Former US Vice President Joe Biden will announce on Thursday that he is seeking the Democratic Party's presidential nomination for the 2020 election, a source familiar with the plans said on Tuesday. Biden, 76, a longtime senator who served for eight years under Democratic President Barack Obama, would join a crowded field of nearly 20 other candidates seeking to defeat Republican President Donald Trump. Biden is expected to make his announcement by video and would bring an end to months of speculation about whether he would challenge Trump, who followed Obama in the White House following his 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Next Monday, Biden will meet with union workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a pivotal state that backed Trump in 2016, the source said. Trips will follow to all four early voting states - Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada - in coming weeks, the source said, adding the details were still being completed. Biden unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in 1988 and 2008. He has faced questions in recent weeks about his history of touching strangers at political events, with several women coming forward to say he had made them feel uncomfortable. Biden has said he believed he never acted inappropriately but would be more mindful about his behaviour.

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The recipe Trim the dark green florets from a 500g broccoli and set aside. Thinly slice the stalks then sauté them in 30g of butter for 3 or 4 minutes until bright and translucent, then add the florets and continue cooking for 3 or 4 minutes until they are tender. Add salt and pepper and 250ml of double cream and bring to the boil. Get an overhead grill hot. Gently, without breaking the florets, fold in 60g of grated Parmesan then spoon into 2 small, oven-proof dishes. Cook under the heated grill for 4 or 5 minutes until golden and bubbling, then serve with the grilled plaice below. Place 2 fillets of plaice skin-side down on a foil-covered baking sheet. Melt 30g of butter in a small pan and season with salt and a little pepper. Spoon the butter over the fish. Cook under the overhead grill for 3 or 4 minutes, until the fish is patchily golden and tender enough to cut with a fork. Serve with the creamed broccoli. Enough for 2. The trick Cook the broccoli first, then the plaice. The plaice cooks very quickly, in just 3 or 4 minutes, which is just enough time for the broccoli to settle. The stalks should be cooked first, then the florets, as they are tougher and need a few minutes longer. Slice even the thickest stalk no thicker than a £1 coin. The twist Use mushroom instead of broccoli. Slice chestnut mushrooms thinly and cook in a little butter until golden. Then add the cream and grated Parmesan as above. A little garlic, sautéed with the broccoli stalks or mushrooms, is a good idea, as is the inclusion of a little chopped tarragon, added at the same time as the florets.

A word processor is software or a device that allows users to create, edit, and print documents. It enables you to write text, store it electronically, display it on a screen, modify it by entering commands and characters from the keyboard, and print it. Of all computer applications, word processing is the most common. Today, most word processors are delivered either as a cloud service or as software that users can install on a PC or other device. With the advent of cloud computing in the 2000s, word processing changed again. The cloud allowed users to do their word processing via a browser-based application. While these cloud-based word processors lacked the advanced functionality of software installed on a device, they allowed users to store their documents in a remote data center and access them from any Internet-connected PC or mobile device. They also made it easier for geographically separated teams of people to work together on the same document. Many users found that cloud-based word processors offered enough features to meet their needs, as well as greater convenience, mobility, and collaboration support. Standard Features of Word Processors Word processors vary considerably, but all word processors, whether cloud-based or installed on a system, support the following basic features: insert text: Allows you to insert text anywhere in the document. delete text: Allows you to erase characters, words, lines, or pages. cut and paste: Allows you to remove (cut) a section of text from one place in a document and insert (paste) it somewhere else. copy: Allows you to duplicate a section of text. page size and margins: Allows you to define various page sizes and margins, and the word processor will automatically readjust the text so that it fits. search and replace: Allows you to direct the word processor to search for a particular word or phrase. You can also direct the word processor to replace one group of characters with another everywhere that the first group appears. word wrap: Automatically moves to the next line when you have filled one line with text, and it will readjust text if you change the margins. print: Allows you to send a document to a printer to get hard copy. file management: Provides file management capabilities that allow you to create, delete, move, and search for files. font specifications: Allows you to change fonts within a document. For example, you can specify bold, italics, and underlining. Most word processors also let you change the font size and even the typeface. windows: Allows you to edit two or more documents at the same time. Each document appears in a separate window. This is particularly valuable when working on a large project that consists of several different files. spell checking: Identifies words that don't appear in a standard dictionary. Full-Featured Word Processors Most installable modern word processor software supports additional features that enable you to mani[CENSORED]te and format documents in more sophisticated ways. Full-featured word processors usually support the following advanced features, and cloud-based word processors may have some of these features as well: grammar checking: Identifies sentences, paragraphs, and punctuation that doesn't appear to meet commonly recognized rules of grammar. footnotes and cross-references: Automates the numbering and placement of footnotes and enables you to easily cross-reference other sections of the document. automated lists: Automatically creates bulleted or numbered lists, including multi-level outlines. graphics: Allows you to embed illustrations, graphs, and possibly even videos into a document. Some word processors let you create the illustrations within the word processor; others let you insert an illustration produced by a different program. headers, footers, and page numbering: Allows you to specify customized headers and footers that the word processor will put at the top and bottom of every page. The word processor automatically keeps track of page numbers so that the correct number appears on each page. layout: Allows you to specify different margins within a single document and to specify various methods for indenting paragraphs. macros: Enables users to define and run macros, a character or word that represents a series of keystrokes. The keystrokes can represent text or commands. The ability to define macros allows you to save yourself a lot of time by replacing common combinations of keystrokes. merge: Allows you to merge text from one file into another file. This is particularly useful for generating many files that have the same format but different data. Generating mailing labels is the classic example of using merges. tables of contents and indexes: Allows you to automatically create a table of contents and index based on special codes that you insert in the document. thesaurus: Allows you to search for synonyms without leaving the word processor. collaboration: Allows users to track changes to the document when more than one person is editing. Some cloud-based word processors also allow multiple users to edit the same document at the same time. Internet features: Allows users to embed Web links into their documents and format their documents for the Web. Some also link to Web services that can help users create their documents. translation and speech: As artificial intelligence capabilities become more commonplace, some word processors have gained the ability to read text aloud, to accept voice commands, and to translate text from one language to another.

What is it? A nostalgic internet detective adventure. Expect to pay £15/$20 Developer Tendershoot Publisher No More Robots Reviewed on GTX 1080, Intel i5-6600K, 16GB RAM Multiplayer None Once upon a time, the internet was something you went on rather than something that was always there. It was a thing you'd occasionally enjoy, usually in the evenings when it was cheaper; not a fibre optic thread running through every facet of your existence. And Hypnospace Outlaw, a cyber-detective adventure set within a fictional computer operating system, is a nostalgic return to this Old Internet. In the game's alternate 1999, people climb into bed at night, snap on a high-tech headband, and drift into Hypnospace. This garish low-res internet, inspired by the digital shanty towns of GeoCities, is fully realised. There are hundreds of pages to click around, split into zones that reflect the personalities of their eccentric creators. In Teentopia you'll find edgy teenagers, nu metal, and drama. In Open Eyed, new age spiritualists and conspiracy theorists. It's a brilliantly observed snapshot of the primordial web. You are an Enforcer hired by the creator of Hypnospace, Merchantsoft, to locate and destroy objectionable content. This could be copyright infringement, harassment, or malicious software. And when you find something that breaks the rules you click on the gavel at the top of your browser, then on the offending article, and watch as it's scrubbed from the internet. In return you receive a bounty of HypnoCoins: a currency used to buy software, wallpapers, virtual pets, screensavers, and other frippery to personalise your OS. But it becomes clear after a few cases that you are not a force for good, and have been weaponised by Merchantsoft to ruthlessly censor and control the web. An early case sees you removing cute kids' drawings from a teacher's website because they contain a copyrighted image of a cartoon character. Bringing the gavel down on these harmless doodles was genuinely difficult, and the sound of HypnoCoins tinkling into my virtual wallet, my thirty pieces of silver, only made me feel worse about what I was doing. Once upon a time, the internet was something you went on rather than something that was always there. It was a thing you'd occasionally enjoy, usually in the evenings when it was cheaper; not a fibre optic thread running through every facet of your existence. And Hypnospace Outlaw, a cyber-detective adventure set within a fictional computer operating system, is a nostalgic return to this Old Internet. In the game's alternate 1999, people climb into bed at night, snap on a high-tech headband, and drift into Hypnospace. This garish low-res internet, inspired by the digital shanty towns of GeoCities, is fully realised. There are hundreds of pages to click around, split into zones that reflect the personalities of their eccentric creators. In Teentopia you'll find edgy teenagers, nu metal, and drama. In Open Eyed, new age spiritualists and conspiracy theorists. It's a brilliantly observed snapshot of the primordial web. You are an Enforcer hired by the creator of Hypnospace, Merchantsoft, to locate and destroy objectionable content. This could be copyright infringement, harassment, or malicious software. And when you find something that breaks the rules you click on the gavel at the top of your browser, then on the offending article, and watch as it's scrubbed from the internet. In return you receive a bounty of HypnoCoins: a currency used to buy software, wallpapers, virtual pets, screensavers, and other frippery to personalise your OS. But it becomes clear after a few cases that you are not a force for good, and have been weaponised by Merchantsoft to ruthlessly censor and control the web. An early case sees you removing cute kids' drawings from a teacher's website because they contain a copyrighted image of a cartoon character. Bringing the gavel down on these harmless doodles was genuinely difficult, and the sound of HypnoCoins tinkling into my virtual wallet, my thirty pieces of silver, only made me feel worse about what I was doing. Later cases are much more involved, and Hypnospace Outlaw reveals itself to be a surprisingly challenging puzzle game. Tasks include busting an illegal file-sharing ring and infiltrating a hacker collective, and doing so requires some genuine detective work. You use a search engine to trawl the web for unlisted pages, secret communities, passwords, and other clues, and I had to have a notebook on hand to keep track of important names and keywords. When I cracked a case with imagination and perseverance (rather than just stumbling into the solution, which happened occasionally) it felt massively rewarding because I knew I'd done all the legwork myself. Even so, the guilt of working for The Man, a corporate censorship drone, is hard to shake. There are opportunities for redemption, however. I won't go into specifics, but Hypnospace Outlaw does have a narrative threaded through it, with some brilliant twists and turns. And these often change the flow of the game, taking you in unexpected directions. But no matter what you're doing, the heart of the thing remains Hypnospace itself: a superb, frequently hilarious pastiche of the early days of the internet, complete with animated GIFs, garish typography, under construction signs, tiled backgrounds, and looping MIDIs. But Hypnospace Outlaw does more than just parody the GeoCities aesthetic to score easy nostalgia points. It perfectly captures the feel of the Old Internet too. That surge of creativity unleashed by normal people being able to make their mark on the web for the first time. The tribalism, in-jokes, and intercommunity rivalries. The militant moderators, bullies, and oddballs. As you click between these vivid, animated pages you get the sense that this is a real, thriving community that existed long before you turned up. The world-building is remarkable considering it all takes place in a web browser. The HypnOS interface holds everything together, being an almost fully functional operating system in its own right. You can drag icons around the desktop, download and open documents, listen to audio files in a WinAmp-style media player (complete with lurid skins), and even choose from a selection of screensavers. It's also possible, if you're careless with what you download, to contract viruses. One makes your windows slosh and lurch around like a boat in the water, but you can, thankfully, install anti-virus software. It all feels nicely clicky and tactile, although it can get a little confusing when you have a lot of windows open simultaneously. I also found the slow loading times, as authentic as they are, a little frustrating when trying to navigate quickly between pages. You can waggle the mouse cursor to make the page furniture pop in more quickly, which is a cute idea, but the novelty wore off pretty quickly. Those criticisms aside, Hypnospace Outlaw is, rather unexpectedly, one of the best detective games on PC. Its puzzles are layered and complex, but never unfair. It respects you enough to let you figure things out at your own pace, and with almost no hand-holding. But if you do hit a wall (trust me, you will) there's a well-designed hint system buried in there too. Its internet is a joyous explosion of art, music, creativity, and weirdness, and a pleasure to explore. And it's a nice reminder of when the internet felt like a cool underground club, rather than a pervasive Hell from which there is no escape.

NEED TO KNOW What is it? Expansive city-builder themed around the industrial revolution. Expect to pay $60/£50 Developer Blue Byte Publisher Ubisoft Reviewed On Nvidia GTX Titan, Intel core i5-3570K 3.40 GHZ, 16 GB RAM, Multiplayer Yes Link Official site Anno 1800 belongs to a select group of games that I like to refer to as “Blink and it’s 2 AM” games. For example, you might sit down in an evening with the plan of setting up your first steel mill. Then you blink and it’s 2 AM and you’ve somehow founded a colony in the New World. Alternatively, perhaps you set the goal of reaching the next po[CENSORED]tion milestone to unlock a new building. Then you do that, and the building you unlock is a zoo for which you can build individual enclosures to fill with several dozen type of animals. Blink. This is comfortably the most engrossing city-builder I’ve played since Cities: Skylines, one that combines an intriguing theme with some enjoyably complex production chains and trading mechanics. It also has a wealth of buildings to construct and resources to produce, letting you construct some truly enormous urban sprawls. Anno 1800 puts you in the hobnailed boots of an up-and-coming business magnate in the burning heart of the industrial revolution. There are three ways to play, Campaign, Sandbox, and Multiplayer. Structurally, they’re all basically the same—the campaign is itself a gigantic sandbox that happens to feature a chain of missions to follow. Whichever way you choose to play, you start out in charge of a Western-European island with nothing but a trading post to your name. Your first goal is to build a simple farming village, which acts as the foundation for your city. From here, your objective is to grow a bustling metropolis that will stretch its tendrils to the horizon and beyond. In its early stages, Anno 1800 is a straight-up city-builder. Progress is Anno is predicated upon two things—po[CENSORED]tion growth and meeting the needs and wants of your citizens.. Each “class” of person has a different set of requirements that you need to meet. Farmers, for example, simply require clothes and fish to subsist. But to make them happy, you need to ply them with alcohol. You’ll need acres of potato fields that can be distilled into schnapps, while also ensuring all farmsteads are within staggering distance of a pub. The better you meet those needs, the more people will fill the houses of your village. Once a farmhouse reaches its maximum po[CENSORED]tion, it can then be upgraded to house the next class of citizen—workers. This unlocks the next evolutionary stage of your settlement, letting you construct more advanced buildings like brickworks and breweries. However, workers are considerably more particular in their needs and wants, going so far as to demand soap, the fops. At the same time, your production lines become increasingly convoluted. Creating wood to build farmhouses, for example, requires a lumberjack’s yard, a sawmill, and a warehouse to store the goods. Creating steel beams, on the other hand, requires both an iron-mine and a coalmine for the raw materials, a smelting plant to create steel ingots, and finally a steelworks to forge the beams. Larger factories also require dozens, even hundreds of workers to function, so you need the supporting infrastructure in place to keep them fed, watered, and clean. This is where Anno 1800’s “Blink and it’s “2AM” qualities start to reveal themselves. Once you unlock the third tier of “citizen”, Artisans, you’ll need an infrastructure capable of supporting the production of sewing machines, fur coats, and rum. The latter of these, of course, requires raw materials that don’t grow in a European climate. So to acquire these, you need to build ships and send them to explore the New World. The New World is represented on an entirely different map, and has unique citizen types, production chains, and resources. This effectively means a game of Anno 1800 plays out on two unique RTS maps at once, which has all sorts of tactical considerations if you’re playing in multiplayer. You could be the King of Steel in the Old World, only to find your economy collapsing because someone in the New World stole an island that produces all your cotton. Either way, you’ll need to set up trade routes to get these exotic goods to your increasingly needy (and populous) citizenry. It’s worth noting at this point that both sides of Anno’s city-construction are wonderful to watch in motion. The game has a slightly painterly aesthetic that complements the detail of its models and animations beautifully. Your fields of wheat and sugarcane are abuzz with workers, while carriages pulled by horses transport resources to the next stage of production. These details evolve with your city, too. Clothing fashions change as your city becomes more advanced, while your horse-drawn carriages will increasingly give way to railroads and even bicycles. Such intimate detail does mean Anno 1800 is quite performance heavy. Viewing larger cities from certain angles will likely cause a significant dip in frame-rate on low-to-medium spec machines. As your production chains expand and the desires of your people grow, the strategic side of Anno 1800 begins to show its teeth. At one point I discovered my starting island couldn’t produce beer, as the soil wasn’t fertile for growing hops. My people quietly informed me of this by staging a massive riot that obliterated my production and almost cost me my game. Needless to say, I promptly colonised a nearby island and set up a second settlement dedicated almost entirely to the production of beer, then organised a trade route to ferry this vitally important resource to the mainland. The way all Anno’s systems interlock is impressive. If you’re struggling to create a resource yourself, then you can purchase it via your trading post. Yet doing this puts you at the behest of other players (or the AI if you’re playing singleplayer). At the same time, you can sell surplus produce from your settlements for profit. But even a burgeoning economy isn’t a guarantee of success. You still need to be able to either create or acquire the right resources to push your city deeper into the technological age. In its later stages, Anno becomes a blend of industrial-scale plate-spinning with some broad-strokes RTS thrown in. As competition for resources becomes fiercer, you may need to wrest control of islands from your opponents. This can be done either through military force, deploying fleets of gunboats and frigates to lay siege to their ports. Or you can purchase shares in the island you desire, ultimately taking control in one fell financial swoop. For the most part, I think Anno’s core systems are elegantly balanced. At times it can make you feel stretched, especially if multiple random events like fires happen at once. Even when had to pause a new project to upgrade a bunch of houses or relocate a low-level farm, however, I never felt bogged down in micromanagement. That said, I do want to highlight one curious idiosyncrasy. Given the game’s core theme of a shift from an agrarian to an urbanised society, it’s surprising that employment is not more of a consideration. In fact, Anno 1800’s attitude to employment is the polar opposite of the period it is based on. Each household earns a set income regardless of whether the people who live there are have a job in the city or not. This effectively encourages you to have a large surplus of unemployed citizens, as each new house you build brings in that much more coin. As long as you can meet their needs, it’s perfectly fine to have hundreds of people sitting around doing nothing. I’m not sure whether this counts as a flaw per-se, as there’s more than enough complexity to grapple with ensuring all your different citizens are sufficiently catered for. It’s just odd given how the game is otherwise very conscious of the changing times it represents. A harder problem is that Anno 1800 doesn’t provide enough tools to track your in-game finances. Your income and expenses are constantly fluctuating, and those ever-shifting numbers can make it hard to gauge how well your colony is actually doing. Normally I’d sooner eat my own keyboard than look at a graph in a video-game, but I think Anno 1800 would benefit from a bell-curve or two. By far Anno 1800s biggest issue, however, is the appalling and incessant yammering of its AI players. Anno 1800s story campaign features a cast of characters that are fully written and voiced. I really wish it didn’t. The acting is hammier than a Doctor Who Christmas special, particularly that of your in-game nemesis Edvard Goode, who would twirl his moustache right off his face if he actually sported one. Worse yet is the writing of the AI barks, which are often totally inane and uttered every time they interact with you, whether it’s an automated trade or simply a slight decline in diplomatic relations. One AI character declares “I can finally get rid of that pent-up gas!” literally every five minutes. This may seem like a minor problem, but it’s incredibly distracting from what is otherwise a gentle yet utterly absorbing game, like an episode of Better Call Saul being interrupted by the appearance of Keith Lemon. Script carbuncles aside, Anno 1800 is a rich and sumptuous city-builder, easily the grandest and deepest Anno to date. Its early game is a wonderfully relaxing experience, while the later stages will have you scratching your mutton-chops and happily stretching your braces in equal measure.

Have you ever wondered what the business of selling grass would be like? The guys from Vile Monarch do, and they offer us a curious simulator in the form of a real-time strategy game called Weedcraft Inc where they put us in the world of production and sale of this plant The boys of Vile Monarch intend to embark on a curious game of strategy of resource management (of the sub-genre called tycoon) with Weedcraft Inc, and that puts us in the shoes of a great tycoon of the sale of cannabis. At least that is the goal, because before we get to magnates we will have to start our small herb production, cultivate it and think about its distribution possibilities throughout the United States. This is the initial approach of Weedcraft Inc. that will reach PC in 2019 and proposes to explore the business of producing, raising and selling marijuana in the United States, deepening the financial, political and cultural aspects of the country's complex relationship with this problem. and promising plant. It's always a bad day when the cops come knocking at the door of your illegal marijuana growhouse. The officer, a florid beat cop named Polanski, delivers a friendly warning: The whole building stinks like three dead skunks bouncing around a tumble dryer, and he suggests—wink wink—that I may have a gas leak or something. The next day, I install an air purifier and run it next to the half-dozen tall, budding bushes of Super Lemon Haze. Weedcraft Inc is a colorful, risque take on the business tycoon idea. In the starting scenario, I play as an MBA dropout who heads home from college and seizes an opportunity to go into the weed business. That could also be the start of a middling stoner comedy, but the game isn't half-baked: it's a detailed management sim crammed full of options and information, and the process of growing and perfecting different plants is satisfying. Weedcraft does stumble, especially when it tries to cram a lot of details into managing relationships and people, but overall it's a successful pot growing game. Growing money Weed is the star of the show here, and it shows up in all its bewildering shapes and flavors. With a little start-up cash, I pay to unlock new strains of marijuana with names like Northern Lights, Granddaddy Purple, and Space Queen. Each has its own flavors and effects that make it po[CENSORED]r with different social groups. Cash-flush tourists looking for a good time like relaxing with Margharita Bliss. Epilepsy patients swear by True OG, while cancer patients are all about Blue Dream because it helps them sleep. Different parts of town are frequented by different groups, and everyone has different expectations for price and quality. My inclination ran toward the high-end market: as soon as I had a chance, I tried to grow the most chemically-pure weed the world had ever seen and charge rich kids and tourists a bundle to smoke it. This basic process is where Weedcraft is at its best. From the map screen, I see a view of town with a few major landmarks highlighted as possible venues to grow or sell. Each building is po[CENSORED]ted by different social groups and controlled by different dealers. I look around and I see that competition is weak at the downtown hotel. Tourists there rate the weed available from a local biker gang as sub-par, and I want a cut of their fat, middle-class vacation funds. I spend $10,000 to unlock Margharita Bliss, set up a new grow operation, and get Growing weed starts simple, but doesn't stay simple. I click once to water a plant, which sets a recharge timer spinning until it's due for the next watering. Meanwhile, I can press and hold a plant to "train it," which makes it mature a bit faster. Mechanically, that's all there is to it at first. The interesting part is trying to boost the quality of my weed. Every time I water the plants, I'm pouring on a combination of nutrients that I can tweak. Finding the right balance of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium leads to happier plants. Temperature and humidity in the grow room also have an effect. Between waterings, I use sliders in the grow room menus to tweak a nutrient or bump the temperature, then see what happens, using trial and error to find the optimum growing conditions. Eventually, the hotel's patrons are paying exorbitant prices to smoke my 'rare' or 'epic' quality weed on their vacations. Spotting a market niche, setting up a new grow, and experimenting to improve quality is immensely satisfying. Watching money pour in to make my expense and risk worth it is my favorite part of Weedcraft. After I perfect a new strain, though, there's nothing to do but click on timers. This is where the game moves on to hiring employees and building an empire, and it isn't as successful. Making friends The 'manual' labor in Weedcraft, like growing or selling or running a money-laundering front business, involves clicking or clicking-and-holding on buttons to reset timers. Clicking timers isn't very interesting or very fun, and I can only be in one place at a time. Fortunately, there's a long list of locals I can hire to click on those timers for me. In fact, my drug empire was at its most profitable when I had nothing to do. I had dealers that I trusted, I had a grower who cultivated good quality weed, and I just let the money roll in. I ended up striking a balance: I personally ran a lab where I experimented with new strains and hired people to do everything else. Every time employees do their jobs, they get a little better at them. When they level up, they get more efficient at their work—and they stop by to ask about a raise. Talking to people and keeping them happy and well-paid is important to this aspect of Weedcraft, but I found the RPG-ish conversation trees repetitive. Since just taking the time to explore conversation trees such as "Family" or "Business" led to a happy friendship, I never met anyone in the game that I just didn't get along with. Eventually, I started treating "make friends" as one more item on my to-do list, speed-clicking through conversation menus to butter up cops and new employees. Having great relationships also didn't stop weird betrayals from happening. When Officer Polanski (a close friend of mine) arrested one of my dealers, I paid Polanski a bribe and gave the dealer a raise. The dealer (also a close friend) became fanatically devoted to me until a week later, when a rival gang offered him a little more money and he asked me to match it or he was going to walk. While it's true that poaching employees and matching rival offers is a totally normal thing to happen, it left me wondering: why did I bother making friends with that guy? These random events make managing human relations feel a bit like a treadmill. Whether or not I keep my employees happy, whether or not I keep the local cops in my pocket, the game's internal logic doesn't seem to care. These character backgrounds also establish another way to deal with competing drug producers. I routinely sent devoted employees to sabotage the competition or steal a new breed of plant. Pulling off a mission like this is enjoyable and feels kind of like cheating—like sending a ninja to assassinate a rival king in a military strategy game. But sometimes, it just doesn't work. Once, I investigated dozens of leads on a rival dealer to find that none of them were part of a secret I could blackmail them with. It's true that in real life that some people aren't on the run from a dark past, but I felt robbed. I'm still not sure if it was a bug or a nod to the squeaky-clean nature of some saint-like drug dealers, but it was deflating either way. When investigations don't pan out or random encounters with employees or cops illogically derail a lot of hard work, Weedcraft is at its weakest: overstuffed, full of options, and with too many superfluous things going on. Breaking bad Weedcraft promises to "treat weed in an insightful manner," and for the most part I think it nails the politics. The breadth of characters is an accurate portrayal of who smokes weed in America: college students, parents, musicians, artists, professionals, politicians, tourists, patients. My first employee was a grumpy, elderly black woman and my best dealer was a round-faced white man who dressed like a lawyer. Special orders came in from widows suffering from back pain and from pledge leaders at a local sorority stocking up for a party. I delivered weed to a pro-drug war politician whose son was fighting off withdrawal. I had long conversations about the inherent corruption of a system that celebrates alcohol, condemns marijuana, and turns a blind eye to pharmaceutical companies addicting and killing a generation of pain patients. All of this is part of a complex background of interlocking legalities. As I expanded to new cities away from the starter city in Michigan, I had an opportunity to sell weed in jurisdictions where it is legal for recreational use. As I grew in wealth and influence, I started helping to craft legislation and propose bills that would legalize or decriminalize marijuana, suddenly seizing the chance to bring my underground business above-board. Playing with this combination of legal and illegal makes Weedcraft unique in the business-sim genre, as far as I know. Expanding to Boulder, Colorado, I could run a completely legal business. Or I could legally grow in Boulder and then smuggle weed to other cities and sell it illegally. Or I could get a medical grower's license and sell legally to patients and illegally to weekend party-goers. Each jurisdiction comes with its own costs and opportunities, and Weedcraft does a pretty good job of balancing all of these individual pieces. Weed in America is a complex blend of weird jurisdictions, Reefer Madness–fueled paranoia, and unjust, racially-targeted legal consequences. Even when it doesn't work very well, I'm impressed that Weedcraft attempted to build a tycoon game with enough depth and nuance to explore some of those things.

Brenda Jackson, mother of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kelley Earnhardt Miller, has died of cancer at 65, JR Motorsports announced on Monday. Jackson worked as an accounting specialist for JR Motorsports, owned by Earnhardt Jr, Miller and Rick Hendrick, since 2004 and was known for her wit and charisma. "Her sarcastic musings and straightforward approach injected a brand of humor at JR Motorsports that became part of its fabric as it grew into a full-time NASCAR racing operation in 2006 and a championship-winning organization in 2014," the company said in a statement. Jackson enjoyed being able to work alongside her children for the past 15 years. "I am a very, very lucky woman, as I get to interact with my kids almost every day," she said last year. "I've got two bright, beautiful kids that I am very proud of." "Kelley's standards are very high. She conducts herself that way and she expects that of everyone else. Dale Jr. just gets bigger and bigger. I am very proud of his accomplishments, but as a mother I am proudest of the way he handles himself with honesty and the way he cares about his family and his friends." Jackson's journey into the racing world started when she was born. Her father, NASCAR fabricator Robert Gee, built many winning cars, including one for racing legend Dale Earnhardt. She married Earnhardt in 1972 and they had two children, Earnhardt Jr. and Miller. They divorced several years later and the kids lived with her until they lost everything in a house fire and she signed over custody to Earnhardt. In 2017, Earnhardt Jr. referenced the fire when he read her an emotional letter he wrote her for Mother's Day. "You, a single mother, us losing everything in a house fire. You gave custody of us two kids to our father, knowing that he could provide a promising future."

Do you have $600 burning a hole in your pocket? Even if that's the case, it still wouldn't be enough to purchase HyperX's new 16GB Predator DDR4-4600 memory kit—you'll need to scrounge together $11 more, and that's before tax. It's one of two new high-speed memory kits HyperX launched today, the other being a cheaper 16GB Predator DDR4-4266 RAM package, priced at $267. PO[CENSORED]R Jedi: Fallen Order Apex Legends Borderlands 3 Sekiro PCG Club Best PC Games HyperX launches a blistering fast 16GB RAM kit, but it costs $611 By Paul Lilly 4 hours ago Most users don't need to spend anywhere near that amount for a 16GB memory kit. COMMENTS Do you have $600 burning a hole in your pocket? Even if that's the case, it still wouldn't be enough to purchase HyperX's new 16GB Predator DDR4-4600 memory kit—you'll need to scrounge together $11 more, and that's before tax. It's one of two new high-speed memory kits HyperX launched today, the other being a cheaper 16GB Predator DDR4-4266 RAM package, priced at $267. RECOMMENDED VIDEOS FOR YOU... Both kits comes in packs of two 8GB modules, only the 4,600MHz kit is qualified to run faster. Interestingly, the timings are the same—they're both CL19 (19-26-26) kits at 1.5V, or you can tighten the latency settings to 19-21-21 at 4,000Mhz, with a lower 1.35V. There wouldn't be much point in doing that, though, not when you can head to Newegg and grab a 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-4000 kit for $139.99, with even tighter timings (19-19-19). RAM speed does matter (a bit) as it pertains to performance, though dropping over $600 on a 16GB memory kit is silly. Any gains that can be had over a much cheaper DDR4 memory kit in the DDR4-3200 range are not going to be worth the hefty premium. You could also go for double the capacity and still spend way less—Corsair's 32GB Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4-3200 is one of the best DDR4 RAM kits, and it costs $269.99. In general, RAM prices have come down considerably over the past several months. In any event, the 16GB Predator DDR4-4266 is available now direct from HyperX, while the DDR4-4600 kit is up for preorder on Amazon. So if you're looking for every last bit of performance, or maybe if you're hoping to set an overclocking record, have at it. We won't judge.